4 Metabolism-Boosting Workouts You Must Try

I love to try new exercises and new workouts. So when the Journal of Strength and Conditioning published a paper last month on the metabolism-boosting effects of a variety of different high intensity exercise protocols, I sat up, took notice, and jotted down the protocols to share with you! In this study, scientists from the Department of Health and Exercise Science at the College of New Jersey had participants perform one of the following exercise programs per session:

Free-weights, with 3 sets of up to 10 repetitions at 75% of the one repetition-maximum (OK, I’ll admit, this was a bit standard and boring)

Push-ups followed by more push-ups on a Bosu ball, with 3 sets of 20 repetitions (Bosu ball looks like a big stability ball cut in half)

Burpees followed by push-ups with a sideways crawl between each, at 3 sets of 10 repetitions

A plank and “battling rope” circuit, with 3 sets of 30 second bouts.

Now those last three were all especially effective at increasing oxygen consumption and metabolic rate. But the battling rope turned out to blow everything else out of the water when it came to eliciting the greatest overall fitness and metabolism-boosting effect.

I don’t know about you, but to me this looks like a great recipe for a new workout! Why not head to the gym (preferably one that has a battle rope as many do these days) and try as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:

20 push-ups

20 Bosu ball push-ups

10 burpees with 5 feet of sideways crawling in between

30 seconds battle rope

30 seconds plank

Not sure what a battle rope is, or how to use one? Stay tuned for a future episode on that, and in the meantime, go check out the rope wave exercise on EXRX.net, then leave any additional thoughts or questions over at Facebook.com/GetFitGuy.